These cars were special. They weren’t nicknamed “Duesies” for nothing. Very expensive, they reeked of luxury. Interestingly, they were not European made but hand built (from 1913 to 1937) in a factory in Indiana.

As we’ve noted before, during the Great Depression people admired (envied?) stars AND absolutely love spiffy cars. What better for studio publicity purposes than to pair the two?

The problem in this case may be that Power, one of the most handsome of Hollywood actors, is upstaged by his marvelous car.

But to give Power his due, this shot was taken at around the time he signed with Twentieth Century Fox, and his film career was taking off in earnest.

In 1936 he costarred with British star Madeleine Carroll in the historical romance Lloyd’s of London. In a change of pace, he appeared a year later with Alice Faye and Don Ameche in the musical drama In OldChicago.

Heading toward full-fledged matinee idol status by the end of the Thirties, the Cincinnati-born star-on-the-rise was paired with Loretta Young in Cafe Metropole, also in 1937. Still in his future were his starring performances in The Mark of Zorro and The Razor’s Edge. And also in the future was Power’s service from 1942 to 1946 as a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps.

In his 1960 book about himself — Memoirs of a Professional Cad — actor George Sanders noted that when stars became producers, their attachment to money grew. They started saving and acquiring financial acumen.

This of course was not true of all of them — Ty Power’s attitude for instance was different. He spent his money freely. He had a yacht, a private aeroplane, and gave lavish parties (not to mention owning that Dusenberg). And women, who are usually more expensive than yachts and aeroplanes, found ways of spending his money when he ran out of ideas.

Ty didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps he had some premonition that he did not need to save for his old age.

Sanders was a Power costar in director King Vidor’s biblical epic, Solomon and Sheba, filmed in Spain and released in 1959. After several stenuous sword-fight scenes with Sanders, Power — who also co-produced the picture — collapsed complaining of pains in his chest and arms.

The end came on Nov. 15, 1958, before the movie was completed. (Yul Brynner stepped in to refilm the actor’s scenes as Power’s replacement.) Power was just 44 when he died.

Between all the drinking, and celebrating, and parading, some might want to watch an old classic movie on St. Paddy’s Day. What’s recommended?

Well, your classic movie guys, Joe Morella and Frank Segers, have pondered the question, and although there are a dozen or so films which might fit the bill, Joe has decided there are only three which are truly classics and worthy of attention.

Darby O’Gill and The Little People. This Disney gem from 1959 stars Sean Connery, Janet Munro, Albert Sharpe (as Darby) and Jimmy O’Dea as the king of the leprechauns. If you’re into a bit of fantasy on the day of the Green, this one’s for you.

For a more recent film there’s 1989’s My Left Foot about the Irish writer and artist, Christy Brown, who had cerebral palsy and could only use his left foot. It’s a touching story with Oscar winning performances by Daniel Day-Lewis as Brown and Brenda Flicker as his mother. The solid cast includes Hugh O’Conor, Fiona Shaw and Cyril Cusack.

And for those who’d like a more traditional view of Ireland as it was remembered by Irish immigrants and their descendants through most of the last half of the 20th century, there’s the truly classic film, The Quiet Man, the emerald beauty from director John Ford.

It’s set in a timeless era in an Ireland of memory rather than fact. It has all the charm and warmth that modern day romantic comedies lack. It stars John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. They are supported by a group of Players from The Irish Theatre.

It was filmed on location by Ford, and released by Republic Studios in 1952. It was nominated as one of the best films of the year. The ONLY best-picture nomination Republic ever received. It is still a delight, 60 years later.

And speaking of Barry Fitzgerald, Frank is pretty much a sucker for every movie the guy made. Fitzgerald brought a touch of the old sod — he was born in Dublin in 1888 — to every role he played.

Check him out in director Leo McCarey’s 1944 charmer Going My Way with BingCrosby. They portray a couple Catholic clerics. Crosby plays ‘Father Chuck O’Malley’ while Fitzgerald is ‘Father Fitzgibbon.’ How Irish can you get?

Fitzgerald even brought Irish whimsy to film noir. In director Jules Dassin’s 1948 thriller, The Naked City, he plays a tough New York City cop (‘Detective Lieutenant Dan Muldoon’) who smiles a lot but unmistakably means serious business.

The Postman Always Rings Twice should satisfy all noir fanatics as well as plain old lovers of heady novels and high-tension movies. Author Cain delivers in spades.

For this episode of Chic Cainery (excuse the pun), start off with the fact that neither the book nor the movie features a Postman, once, twice, or at all. There was plenty of steamy sex, however, off-screen but with little left to the imagination. One result: Boston banned the book. In those days Boston was famous for being stuffy. Oh, well, I’m still a big Red Sox fan.

The novel and the movie are matched up with considerable success.

First the novel. Frank Chambers, a footloose bum, comes onto the scene when he gets thrown off a hay truck and he walks into a sandwich joint. “Twin Oaks’ tavern is the name of the joint.

The Greek owner wants to hire him, especially since the young man is a good mechanic for cars that stop there. The Greek’s wife, Cora, had won a shot at Hollywood after winning a prize in her home town of Des Moines. Like many would-be starlets, she wound up behind an eatery counter (okay, I tried to make that sound like Cain himself).

When the Greek takes Frank’s advice and heads to L.A. to get a neon sign to attract customers, he’s barely out the door when Cora initiates the first kiss, squealing bite me, bite me, and he hauls her and her bloody lips upstairs for further discussion. Later on, by the way, she begs him, rip me, rip me like you did before. Frank complies, with not much left to the imagination. You begin to get the idea why Boston banned the book.

Soon enough, the panting pair set the Greek up for a fatal accident (by the way, the novel includes a lot of offensive ethnic references to the Greek — Cora doesn’t like his oily skin and makes nasty ethnic comments.) Their first attempt at knocking off the Greek failed, but he was injured, and the cops were suspicious.

The lovers contrive another “accident,” and then the cops, DA, lawyers, etc., appear on the scene, and my guess is that Cain did NOT like lawyers. Some seem downright sleazy, on the make, and not exactly candidates for the Supreme Court.

The nasty pair contrive yet another accident and this time the Greek is history, the pair get married and collect a tidy sum of the deceased Greek’s insurance.

In the novel, Cora’s mother dies and she heads back to Des Moines. Frank at once latches onto a hot tamale who specializes in acquiring and selling animals — evidently there’s a big market in California for critters such as pumas and the like. When Cora gets back, she’s less than delighted to meet puma girl.

Also, it turns out, she’s pregnant.

Cora and Frank go swimming in the ocean, a favorite pastime, but she has a horrid onset of a miscarriage and she dies there. The law decides that Frank married her for her money and then somehow was responsible for her death on the beach. There were a lot of rightly suspicious lawyers and cops around.

By the way, in the 1940s and 1950s, there was an imperative when criminals got locked up. Can you guess?

Yes, indeed, John Garfield was in the slammer, along with a priest who spoke thoughtful, comforting words. Practically the same comforting priest was in the cell with Frank (of the novel) and Garfield (the movie.)

Well, the movie wasn’t a great deal different from the novel as far as cheating, double-crossing and the like are considered. That’s tough going.

It surprised me to watch the original movie version (not the 1981 remake) and discover that director Tay Garnett managed pretty well to pull all the elements together. It helped that Turner and Garfield performed very well indeed.

You read it here first: Lana is HOT!

A novel being compressed into a movie must have been a tough call, but it works well, though much of the movie is devoted to sleazy lawyers, double-deals, pay-offs, bribes, strong-arm tactics etc. I was pleased to note the presence in the courtroom of the dapper young Hume Cronyn.

Offhand we can’t think of too many novels that have been converted into movies as often as has JamesM. Cain’sThe Postman Always Rings Twice.

A lusty young wife, who finds her much older husband boring and physically repulsive. A virile vagabond, who turns up at the door one day. Eyes lock, libidos surge and then — all hell breaks loose.

Hello, everybody. Mr. Joe Morella and Mr. Frank Segers, your classic movie guys here to observe that Hollywood could never resist a tale of sex, greed, double crosses and violence. And, as we are writing this, we notice that Ms. Norman Maine is outside flirting with the pool boy.

We suspect that most of you are familiar with 1946’s boilerplate version of Caine’s 1934 crime novel, lauded as the 20th century’s best example of the genre. (Not sure we agree, but so be it for the moment.) In typical MGM fashion, their movie version directed by TayGarnett was sanitized at least to the extent that the book’s ethnic content is played down.

The very Greek older husband in the book is portrayed by Cecil Kellaway, a genial faustian Brit who came from South Africa. But there’s no doubting the sexual electricity generated by the movie’s two stars, Lana Turner as “Cora Smith” and John Garfield as “Frank Chambers.”

Turner looks terrific, as alluring as the Hayes Office would allow at the time, although her wardrobe is a tad on the expensive side for a diner waitress. Always a strong actor, Garfield lends gravitas-by-association to Turner’s erotically charged performance.

It may come as a surprise that this MGM Postman edition was a bit late to the party.

Leave it to those lusty Europeans to first spot, understand and then latch onto the Cain property. The earliest movie based on the novel dates from 1939, and is French, Le Dernier Tournant (The Last Turn). Directed by Pierre Chenal, it costars Corinne Luchaire and Fernand Gravey as the lovers and the famous Gaulic actor Michel Simon as the aging, unattractive husband (one “Nick Marino”; note the ethnic change from Greek to Italian here).

We haven’t caught up with that French version. But for our money, the best of the movies based on the Cain novel (and probably the most faithful to the feeling of the book) is renowned Italian director Luchino Visconti’s 1942 maiden film, Ossessione.

The performances of the two leads — Clara Calamai as the young wife, Massimo Girotti as the vagabond — are dynamite. The sexual tension between the two leaps off the screen. It helped that Calamai was no stranger to onscreen friskiness (she had bared her breasts in a previous movie, a very big deal at the time) and Girotti, who died at 84 in 2003, was always regarded as a handsome, physical actor.

Rounding out the excellent cast is the portly Spanish-born actor, Juan deLanda, who portrays the older husband as a living-large dolt whose dictatorial style is backed up by an ominously bulky presence. (His interpretation of the character is the polar opposite of the rather meek Kellaway’s in the MGM version.)

Like the Cain novel, which was banned in Boston when it came out, Ossessione ran into censorship problems. The film’s negative was said to have been destroyed by fascists although Visconti managed to hide and keep a print. Thank heavens, because the picture is a true classic. We urge you to take a look.

You notice that we haven’t yet mentioned Bob Rafelson’s 1981 version of Postman costarring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange as the lovers, and John Calicos as the older husband. Despite a script by David Mamet and sexual scenes more explicit than those in the movie’s predecessors, this version of the Cain tale is almost completely forgettable.

Just what is it about Cain’s novel that inspired not one but FOUR movie versions in three countries? We asked our BOOKS2MOVIES maven Larry Michie to read the book, and report back in tomorrow’s blog. Stay tuned.

Although she has been off the silver screen for over 60 years Deanna Durbin, the singing star of the 1930s and 40s has a devoted following. Such was her impact.

Hello Everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back again with a short quiz for all you film fans. And remember, no peeking at our previous DD blogs (Need To Know Deanna Durbin and Deanna Durbin – Rival to Judy, Nov. 10-11, 2011).

Although today it is hard to imagine that a film star who was so famous then can now be so forgotten, that is the fate of Edna May Durbin, known as Deanna.

And yet IS she forgotten? Perhaps not. Her name creeps up in the oddest places. Not just on announcements about films being shown on TCM, but in historical and literary references.

D) Question: Did she ever win an Academy Award? 1) No, but was nominated several times; 2) Yes; or 3) Yes, but it was shared.

E) Question: She made over 20 films and shorts in her 12 year career, yet only one film was in Color. Which one?

F) Question: Was Deanna the voice for Walt Disney’s Snow White?

G) Question: On which radio program was Deanna a regular feature? 1) The Charlie McCarthy Show (with Edgar Bergen); 2) Allen’s Alley with Fred Allen; 3) The Jack Benny Program; or 4) The Eddie Cantor Show.

Above is Joan in the late 1920s with one of her favorite autos, her 1929 Ford Town Car. Of course she sat in the back while her chauffeur drove. The sign of a true star.

Your classic movie guys, Joe Morella and Frank Segers, back with more photos and info on Stars and Their Cars.

By 1932, when Joan was TRULY a big star, and when the depression was on, so it wasn’t fashionable to be seen having a chauffeur, Joan drove herself in her new Cadillac Fleetwood.

What beauties! (And we’re not necessarily referring to Joan.)

It’s interesting to note that opulence of the autos reflected the changes in the career of the actress who was born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas. (You forget sometimes that the always stylish Crawford was a down home Texas girl.)

Anyway, Crawford was 24 when she was getting around in that Ford Town Car. She had broken through as an actress, and was then getting costarring parts opposite WilliamHaines (The Duke Steps Out), Robert Montgomery (Untamed) and Douglas FairbanksJr. (Our Modern Maidens).

By 1932, she had graduated to big starring roles in such familiar titles as MGM’s GrandHotel with Greta Garbo and John Barrymore; and playing Sadie Thompson in director Lewis Milestone’s Rain, based on the W. Somerset Maugham story of a prostitute in the South pacific.

By the late 1970’s, Charles McGraw’s movie and tv career was, to put it kindly, winding down.

The actor had been the tough mainstay of some of the finest film noirs ever made. He was also the versatile character player sought out by so many directors, notably include Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Richard Brooks — who cast McGraw (as pictured above) in the role of Robert Blake’s abusive father in 1967’s In Cold Blood, the superb film version of the Truman Capote’s account of the brutal slaying of a Kansas family.

But by this time, McGraw’s life was a mess.

Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, finishing up today our three-blog series on one of Frank’s all-time favorite actors whose end — described as a horrendous fatal accident by writer Eddie Muller — was (and still is) the talk of film noir fans worldwide.

Always a working man’s actor, McGraw had been drinking steadily (beer was his preference) for years, usually in Studio City saloons along Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. Bar hopping had long since turned into a way of life, costing McGraw his marriage to a beautiful Eurasian woman (with a passing resemblance to a young Ava Gardner), and estranging the couple’s only daughter.

Long gone were days of his topline roles in such solid noir titles as director Richard Fleischer’s superb 1950 RKO thriller, Armored Car Robbery, and such quirky television projects as 1955’s eight-episode series, Casablanca, based on — yes! — that Casablanca. (McGraw played Rick Blaine, Humphrey Bogart’s role in the 1942 movie classic.)

The last of his 68 feature film roles was in 1976’s Twilight’s Last Gleaming, a tax shelter production filmed in Germany by Allied Artists with a heavyweight cast including Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark and Melvyn Douglas. (McGraw played an Army general.) Within a few years, work dried up as doubts were raised about the actor’s reliability.

He was living in reasonable domesticity in the North Hollywood home of an understanding woman who managed to put up with his bar hopping and his quirks. (An arthritic hip would give out periodically sending the actor tumbling to the floor.)

By 1980, when McGraw turned 66, he faced an ultimatum: get help with the drinking or get out. The end came during the summer heat wave that suffocated the San Fernando Valley that year. In a gripping chapter of his excellent, lavishly illustrated and extensively documented biography — Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy (McFarland & Company, 2008) — author Alan K. Rode tells what happened in the early evening hours of July 29.

McGraw had returned home after the day spent at a bar, and announced he was going to take a shower. His companion of 13 years, Mildred Black, heard running water and then a resounding thump. To her horror, she discovered McGraw on his back in the tub with the shower still running. His arm had gone through one of the glass doors surrounding the tub’s edge.

McGraw’s left arm was impaled by a huge chard of glass just above his elbow, Rode wrote. The glass was (embedded) in his arm, severing the artery. The bleeding couldn’t be stopped, and McGraw couldn’t be moved from the slippery tub. 911 was called.

McGraw’s last words: Millie, I’m cold, I’m going to die….

By the time firemen and paramedics arrived, it was too late. He had bled to death. In a twist of fate straight out of a film noir plot, it turned out that emergency assistance had been delayed by an initial mix-up concerning the correct location of Black’s house.

Rode quotes an L.A. police department officer explaining that the fire department went to the wrong address. They either were either given the wrong address or something happened. Black remembered that they took forever.

Writes Rode: No matter how many times McGraw might have perished as a baddie onscreen, nobody who worked on a show with this veteran pro could have anticipated such a macabre finale.

Nobody in the movies was like Charles McGraw. He embodied a unique screen persona that conveyed serious business…McGraw was known as “an actor’s actor”: a ranked heavyweight performer who, concludes Rode, just missed grabbing the brass ring of authentic Hollywood stardom.

The movie is director Richard Fleischer’s superb 1950 RKO thriller, Armored Car Robbery, one of McGraw’s best outings. Filmed over a mere 16 days at a series of locations in and around Los Angeles (including Wrigley Field), the movie has a gang masterminded by a duplicitous villain (superbly played by William Talman) staging a daring robbery at the old ballpark involving an armored car loaded with cash .

There’s a shootout, and McGraw’s partner goes down. At the hospital McGraw’s character is told: ‘I couldn’t save him, lieutenant. I’m sorry.’ McGraw has to break the news to his dead partner’s wife sitting in the waiting room.

In what author Rode terms ‘the bluntest expression of bereavement in film history,’ the police lieutenant says to her, ‘Tough break, Marsha.’

That’s it. (The moment is captured in the above photo with McGraw opposite Anne Nagel as the hapless widow.)

The handling of the sequence is typical of this direct-to-the-point picture lasting barely more than an hour. (The movie opened in L.A. on June 8, 1950, as the second half of a double bill under feature presentation, Columbia’s The Good Humor Man, a slapstick caper starring Jack Carson as an ice cream vendor enmeshed in a crime ring. Does anyone remember that picture?)

In his Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy (McFarland & Co., 2008), Rode writes that in Armored Car Robbery the actor ‘was John Law personified.’

Novelist James Elroy once said in an interview that had he been the subject of a typically intense McGraw movie interrogation, the crime fiction writer personally would have been so intimidated that he would have “given it all up” regardless of whether he was guilty or not.

The actor excelled equally playing nasties. As we noted in last week’s blog, McGraw’s implacably cruel physiognomy is vividly etched in shadowy black-and-white in 1946’s TheKillers, Robert Siodmak’s 1946 reworking of Ernest Hemingway. McGraw and William Conrad (pictured below right) were the hit men.

Probably his best noir titles as a ruthless villains were made with directors Anthony Mann (1947’s T-Men and 1949’s Border Incident). Catch McGraw in the former as Moxie, the ruthless torpedo of a counterfeit gang, as per Rode, who ‘parboils (stool pigeon known as the Schemer) Wallace Fordin a steam bath.

The scene was described, writes Rode, as having raised movie cruelty to a new level.McGraw’s character here is the cinematic equivalent of dry ice.

Born Charles Crisp Butters in Des Moines, Iowa in 1914, McGraw, the only child of a middle class couple (his father worked for the Goodyear tire company), grew up in Akron, Ohio. After a semester at the Univ. of Akron, McGraw took off for New York to try his hand at acting.

His big break came in 1937, when he landed a supporting part in the Group Theatre’s Broadway production Golden Boy. The cast included John Garfield, Frances Farmer, Lee J.Cobb, Elia Kazan, Howard Da Silva and Karl Malden, all Hollywood bound. Rode notes that McGraw paid his dues with the company, working diligently with some of the brightest acting teachers associated with the Group Theatre. By 1942, McGraw was at Fox making his debut in a horror picture, The Undying Monster, playing a Scottish groomsman.

It wasn’t until The Killers that McGraw’s film noir career began. Over the ensuing 11 years, McGraw starred in 22 noirs, many of the titles produced at RKO. A fair sampling would have to include The Long Night, Roses Are Red, The Gangster, TheThreat, Side Street, His Kind of Woman (with Jane Russell and RobertMitchum) and Roadblock.

In our final McGraw blog, we’ll cover the actor’s untimely — and grisly — death. It’s straight out of film noir. Stay tuned.

One of our biggest fans — thank you very much — is Dino Martin Peters, who (as his monicker indicates) is ga-ga about Dean Martin.

Last week we posed the following question to Dino: what do you think of a somewhat less than flattering biography about your man?

We were not referring to the books written by Martin’s children, Deana and Ricci, but the 1999 Nick Tosches tome, Dino: Living High In The Dirty Business of Dreams.

Well, Dino in his inimitable prose style surprised us with the following:

Hey pallies Frank and Joe, how great to have you feature my Dino-thoughts in this here post. To me Tosches’ stunnin’ Dino-bio is not the sort of masterpiece that one reads cover to cover likes any ordinary volume.

DINO: Living High In The Dirty Business Of Dreams is our main man’s main book, and I see it as the essential Dino-resource for all Dino-philes to savor and delve deeply into over and over again.

As scriber Nick points out….our Dino is likes the ultimate engima…likes totally totally unknowable, but Tosches does a stellar job of puttin’ the life, times, and teachin’s of our Dino into one portable source. Others have spoken of Tosches havin’ sorta a love/hate relationship with our great man…and I thinks that is perhaps the best way of framin’ his amazin’ work.

In other writin’s on our Dino, Tosches has described our most beloved Dino as “an American Buddha” and I find that a brillant comparison. You may wanna checks out the Dino-amore-day 2012 post at ilovedinomartin tagged Dino-amore Nick Tosches Style where we posted Tosches amazin’ Dino-essay God Created Dean Martin In His Own Image Then Stood Back, which is chapter 27 in Nick Tosches’ Reader. Anyone who questions Tosches devotion to our Dino simply needs to read that amazin’ reflection.

BTW, did you know that DINO: Living High In The Dirty Business Of Dreams won Blender Mag’s top award for greatest Rock and Roll bio of all times? Pallies who shy away from Tosches’ tome simply are afraid of seein’ all sides of our great man’s great life. Those who truly love our Dino loves each and every detail of his amazin’ life journey.

Our pal Kim Wilson took us to task for not including in our Feb. 27 blog (Ernest Borgnine — ‘Working Actor’ and a STAR) Bette Davis among the luminaries who worked with the veteran actor.

What about Bette Davis? I think they did two films together, and you don’t get a bigger star than Ms. Davis!

Agreed, Kim. But Borgnine’s comments about Davis in his superb 2008 autobiography Ernie are (to us, at least) less interesting than his observations about Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Shelley Winters and Montgomery Clift. For the record, the actor found Bette a terrific professional, and was honored to work with her. No surprises there.

Davis (cast as a Bronx cab driver’s wife) and Borgnine are pictured above with Debbie Reynolds and Barry Fitzgerald in 1956’s A Catered Affair.

Kim also wrote in about our Feb. 28 blog, Just Who Is PEDRO ARMENDARIZ and Why Is He Saying Those Things About Us?

Ha! I must have misread the title because I thought it said Just Who Is Pedro Almodovar, and why is he saying those things about us? Here I thought you were going to talk about one of my favorite directors? Still, enjoyed the piece on the other guy.

This is a theme only hinted at in many films — I have looked a bit and have found nothing to substantiate my suspicions.

(T.E.) Lawrence writes (in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, upon which the movie Lawrence of Arabia is based) as if it was a matter of course, but doesn’t sound as if it was really an integral part of the culture.

Seems to me the way that females are so guarded in Muslim, and I assume prior in all Arab cultures, that young men would need only a precedent to proceed. But what about the girls? I suppose if rape, even ‘statutory’ is punished in similar fashion to theft, just the thought of it would remove the possibility of the act (as I would think it would for anyone anyway).

But she (and Judy Garland, who portrayed her in the 1954 version of A Star is Born) couldn’t hold a candle in the dance department to Eleanor Powell.

She had started on Broadway at 17. A few years later Eleanor hit films with a bang in 1935 in George Whites Scandals and dazzled audiences with her dancing. She could do it all. She could sing, dance, act and she was pretty. But her tapping was what gained her the most praise. MGM signed her and starred her opposite their top leading men such as James Stewart and Robert Taylor.

Joe’s favorite of her films is Broadway Melody of 1940, where she co-stars with FredAstaire. Through the years Astaire danced with the top stars of the genre: Ginger Rodgers, Vera Ellen, Cyd Charisse, Leslie Caron, even Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly.

But none overshadowed him except Eleanor Powell. Perhaps that’s why they made only one film together.

Her career seemed to die in the early Forties, probably because she didn’t find it gave her the satisfaction it once did. She’d married actor Glenn Ford and had become a mother. Their son Peter became an actor and rock singer.

Powell made a few films in the middle and late forties, then after divorcing Ford in 1959, made a highly successful comeback as a nightclub performer.

Although Joe never met Eleanor Powell he did interview Ann Miller several times over the years. Miller told him she considered Powell the best tap dancer ever.

Joe had an interview scheduled with Glenn Ford in February 1982. It was long before cell phones and Ford had tried to reach Joe to reschedule the interview, but hadn’t been able to do so. When Joe showed up at Ford’s house the actor said he’d just heard the news of his former wife’s death. It had been expected. She had been ill for some time. But it still was a sad day for him and their son.